Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Alienated labour and disposable time

By Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.4 Marx’s remarkable, yet largely neglected statement that “[t]he whole development of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time” and his subsequent analysis of the relationship between disposable time, superfluous products, and surplus value suggests an […]

Derailing JD’s Political Career

J.D. Vance’s Yale Law School Classmates Trying To Derail His Political Career It’s not flattering to the GOP pick for Vice President By Kathryn Rubino  Sigh. So Yale Law School’s own J.D. Vance was selected as Donald Trump’s running mate yesterday. It’s a victory for ass-kissers everywhere, and those who haven’t spent the last few years writing about the very junior senator from Ohio are trying […]

Book Review: Death in the Haymarket

I was born into an America where the eight-hour workday was widely observed. But what was for me just another fact of life was a hard-won right of the labor movement that cost hundreds of lives. “Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age […]

NYT on Trump, Orban to Mar-a-Lago, and Fake Electors to Crown Trump

Thom Hartmann Commentary Some interesting reads . . . Finally: The New York Times Editorial Board Calls for Republicans To Reject Trump.  Calling him “Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action,” the Times editorial board laid out, in detail, how deranged Trump is and how deadly his second presidency would be to American democracy and to the […]

Without swift action, the VA will continue ‘eliminating choice for millions of veterans’

by Jasper Craven Task & Purpose In mid-April, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, and Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, sent a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough demanding to know why the agency was wounding itself.  Specifically, they worried about a series of seemingly contradictory eligibility and staffing policies. In […]

USPS regulator says DeJoy should pause all network reform efforts

by Steve Hutkins Save the Post Office Steve is my go to person for the USPS. Both Dan and I have known him for about a decade. Steve and others who have featured on Save the Post Office have been writing on its operation for years. Mostly the topics have been covering Postmaster Louis Dejoy’s […]

Medicare Advantage and Consolidation’s New Frontier – The Danger of “United Healthcare” for All

by Hayden Rooke-Ley, Soleil Shah, and Erin C. Fuse Brown New England Journal of Medicine Introduction The government will pay roughly $500 billion to insurance companies in 2024 to administer the Medicare Advantage program, including 23% more per beneficiary than it spends on traditional Medicare . . . equivalent to an extra $88 billion per year. Medicare Advantage plans cost […]